


the act of makin’ noise

by twelvemagpies



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, and frankly bilbo also tests the limits of his patience, and of his modern music knowledge, bilbo tests the limits of his traditional music knowledge, bilbo/bofur (mentioned), bilbo/thorin (mentioned) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 15:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20798810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twelvemagpies/pseuds/twelvemagpies
Summary: Bilbo tries his hand at being culturally sensitive when it comes to the company and their love for their musical heritage, and he's made to regret it almost immediately.





	the act of makin’ noise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [knife_em0ji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knife_em0ji/gifts).
  * Inspired by [God's Gonna Cut You Down](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19351840) by [knife_em0ji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knife_em0ji/pseuds/knife_em0ji). 

> oh boy hi folks, i’m ash and i gotta say this is not what i thought my first fic in the hobbit fandom would be (i have…...so many more coming. i’m warning you right now. so many. I’m so sorry), but this came to me in a vision on the thameslink home and i had to get it down 
> 
> i suppose it makes sense on its own if you just take it as “modern hobbit au, the company roadtripping to save the world" type deal, but! BUT. this is based on (based in?) [knife-em0ji's](https://knife-em0ji.tumblr.com/) brilliant, marvelous, stunning, fantastic fic God’s Gonna Cut You Down. i cannot recommend this fic enough, i really can’t, jolkien rolkien’s rolling in his grave over it because it’s a poignant, dramatic, hilarious story that keeps getting better and better every chapter. also rené is super cool and sweet and you can tell they love writing it and love the story, it shows so much y’all and makes it so worth reading! 
> 
> really the only the context needed here is that they’re traveling through england after recruiting bilbo and are sheltering from the undead at various stops across the country, and bofur and thorin are both making eyes at bilbo while he’s incredibly oblivious to the whole thing (much to <s>dwalin’s</s> everyone’s chagrin)

Bilbo only realizes he’s staring (again) when Dwalin crosses the line of his glazed-over gaze and stops, arching one impressive eyebrow until Bilbo notices he’s eye-level with Dwalin’s crotch and making a _ terrible _ impression. (That being said, there have been times where a good pointed stare has been exactly the sort of first impression Bilbo’s wanted to make, and has occasionally led to equally fulfilling second and third impressions, but somehow huddling in the back of Wetherspoons while God rained everything but the kitchen sink down on them was.....perhaps not the same sort of situation.)

Dwalin, bless him, doesn’t do more than snort derisively when he sees he has Bilbo’s attention. Instead he turns the other way to see what it was Bilbo was zoning out in the vague direction of, and— 

—and _ whips _ back around to fix a steely glare at Bilbo, brows furrowed together in a great caterpillar-y wrath over the rest of his stony face as he glances again between Bilbo and where Bofur sits before stalking off out of the room. Bilbo watches him go, stomping around the corner towards what’s left of the bar, before turning back to where Bofur still plucks absentmindedly at the strings of his fiddle. He’s well aware he’s been trying Dwalin’s patience from the first day, but crammed onto the back of somebody’s bike and spending most of the ride strategizing over how best to duck and roll in the event of an untimely crash, he must’ve missed when _ Bofur _had worked his way into Dwalin’s bad books.

Bofur looks up as the furious clomping fades into the middle distance, only mildly bemused and still plucking away. When he catches Bilbo’s eye, he winks.

“Enjoying yourself?” Bilbo jumps as Bombur sits down next to him with a groan, hauling a pair of backpacks over his knee by their precariously threadbare straps. Bombur tilts his chin towards where Bofur’s still plucking idly at the strings, fidgeting every now and again with the pegs.

Bilbo’s attempt at nonchalance is a bit more strangled than he would like, shrug coming up stilted in the wake of Dwalin’s abrupt fury and Bofur’s—well it’s hardly _ flirting, _is it? He clears his throat. “He’s getting better.”

“He’s only had it a week, you don’t need to lay on the compliments so thickly.”

“I’m going to hazard a guess,” Bilbo replies dryly, “that he’s perhaps played the fiddle once or twice before,” he gestures to the room and the world at large beyond it, “all this.”

Bombur chuckles. “Aye fine then, he’s only had it two.”

The bizarre floor-to-ceiling tiles throw Bilbo’s voice back at him uncomfortably loudly when he laughs, and across the room Dori and Bifur look up from their card game at the noise. They’re tucked far enough into the back of the pub that it’s unlikely anything could hear them, even over the rain, but it’s a habit long honed. Next to him, Bombur taps his fingers against his leg in time with his brother’s playing.

“Bofur’s taste in music,” Bilbo starts carefully, not sure if he’s about to trod on yet another Super Secret Erebor Thing, “it’s awfully Irish, isn’t it?”

Something _ dangerous _ simmers under the light way Bombur asks, “Awfully?

“Oh! Not awful as in, well, _ awful, _ rather—” Bombur seems content enough to let him flounder his way to his point like a trout on a pier in the name of brotherly overprotectiveness. “Only that I mean that it’s—very Irish,” Bilbo amends. “Surprisingly so, I suppose, given how insular I thought Erebor was.”

“Ah.” Bombur visibly relaxes, tension bleeding from his shoulders. “Well, it’s a family tradition.”

That raises more questions than it answers, Bilbo thinks, but lets it go. Dwalin and Thorin can toss about thunderous scowls and bite back snarls all they want, but Bilbo knows it’s Bombur’s wrath he’d fear far worse.

“I’ll put money on it that he cries when we’ve got to leave it behind,” Bombur says eventually, after a pause where they watch Bofur struggle to rub cracking old rosin onto the bow, powder managing to make its way down one cheek and into the ends of his moustache when he forgets it's on his fingers. He says it with more relish that Bilbo would have expected from pleasant, brotherly Bombur but then again, Bilbo’s never suffered the trials and tribulations of siblinghood. And—more importantly, he suspects—he wasn’t around for the very start of Bofur’s musical career. 

“It’s a miracle we found the thing in the first place,” Bilbo mutters, still a bit incredulous about the whole escapade. “A music shop with a violin right in the window? Right across the street from the safe house?”

Bombur shrugs. “Mahal provides.”

Bilbo would like to point out that Mahal almost provided Bofur a grade II concussion when he’d doubled back across the slick cobblestones to grab the stupid thing, or even that it’d be nicer if Mahal could provide a break in all this damn rain, but he wisely keeps his trap shut. Instead he goes back to watching Bofur play; the opening measures of “Rocky Road to Dublin” float haltingly across the room as Bofur digs his jaw into the chinrest and glances up the neck to make sure his fingers are in the right place. 

“He’s getting better,” Bilbo says again. Bombur grunts in acknowledgement with a pen gripped between his teeth, fishing a can from one of the packs at his feet to hand to Bilbo and marking it down in his records. Bilbo pries up the lid of his Sainsbury’s chip shop curry, lamenting the fact that the last few chippies they’d passed would be more likely to have him on the menu than anything else these days, as Bofur abandons the tune for a different song entirely. It’s one he’s been chipping away at for a few days now—him and the king both, weirdly enough, sat on opposite ends of the room at night while Thorin picked away at the tog’shûr with as much joyful appreciation for music as the London Underground automated announcement system might possess written across his face. He’s outpaced Bofur already, the tune sounding much smoother for all his stormy scowling, but Bilbo still can’t place it. Certainly he’s heard it before, but he’s already lost a good bit of change to the card games that crop up in the corner when they settle down at night, so he’s not about to spoil one of his few chances for fun by just _ asking. _ But oh, it’s something familiar! Something he’d heard during student nights out ages ago, or something pouring out of a tourist-trap traditional pub near Bankside to reel in customers. “It’s rather nice, actually,” he adds, almost surprised by the thought. “Is it an old song?”

Bombur tilts his head at that, brows knitting together in confusion. “Well,” Bombur starts, fiddling with a loose lock of his beard, “I wouldn’t exactly call the nineties _ old—” _

“Oh ach, not that spicy green pepper garbage again!” Glóin stomps past them to relieve Bombur of another can of the curry, glaring balefully at Bofur as he does and almost trodding on Bilbo’s toes.

Bilbo looks down at his can of chip shop curry. A mustardy-yellow piece of (presumably) chicken looks right back, and a quick glance around the room confirms similar cans in nearly everybody's hands. "I don't think there are any peppers in this.” At least not green ones, though he supposes spice might be a matter of personal preference.

Bofur stops with a jerk, dragging bow across string in a screech that echoes. “He’ll be meaning me, I expect. Mister Glóin’s no good with the great ballads of the West, I’m afraid.”

“I wouldn’t call that a ballad,” Kíli snickers from the corner, ducking behind Ori when Glóin’s frown swivels his way.

“At least not the way Bofur plays it,” Fíli adds, absently righting the can Kíli almost knocks over in his mess of flying limbs. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Easy as that, Bofur sets the whole arrangement of fiddle and bow aside to catch the can Bombur tosses him. “It’s a work in progress.”

Bilbo is suddenly struck, not for the first time and _ certainly _ not for the last, with the impression that he’s once again on the outside looking in of some great revelation or crucially important fact obvious only to the freakishly tall or impressively bearded. But mercifully, the conversation into the prowess of Bofur’s musical ability or Glóin’s musical comprehension winds up waylaid by the prospect of dinner, and the company is silent except for the scraping of utensils and Kíli’s soft, humming rendition of the song in question floating across the room. 

Which, finally in tune and in time after a week of off-key and off the cuff renditions, Bilbo recognizes immediately.

He drops his fork with a clatter and doesn’t even wince at the noise. “Oh, you two are _ joking.” _

Fíli and Kíli look up in unison, startled, which triggers a cascade of stern scowls turned his way and really, it serves him right for going on an adventure with so many older brothers. They’re practically more hassle than the infected most of the time. 

He flaps a hand between the fiddle and tog’shûr and their respective owners. “Does—” Bilbo pinches the bridge of his nose. “Does Glóin,_ perhaps, _mean the Red Hot Chili Peppers?”

Thorin and Bofur share, for the first time in what might be days, an entirely amicable and equally confused expression. “Perhaps...?” Bofur hedges.

“Is—Have you been playing ‘Californication’?" Bilbo demands, aghast. 

(In his outrage, he would've completely missed Nori's muttered "Doesn't he _ wish" _ if it wasn’t for the resounding smack Dori swats across the back of his head.) 

Now that he's picked it out he can't unhear it—it fits in with Bofur’s penchant for Flogging Molly or Dropkick Murphys about as well as a middle-aged bookshop owner fits in with a pack of Eastern European royalty! And here he is, asking Bombur if it’s an old Irish reel like it’s not something Bilbo probably nodded sagely along to at a flat party in uni! “Next thing you’ll be telling me,” he hisses, “you and Bombur really are Irish, and I’ve just lost my ear for accents!”

Bombur clears his throat very forcefully, eyes glued to the ceiling, and Bofur turns steadily redder. 

In lieu of a response to the sheerly _ ludicrous _ company he’s managed to fall in with, Bilbo spears a piece of chicken out of his curry with more vehemence than strictly necessary, and decides maybe what Mahal should’ve provided him with is some common fucking sense.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah the fic mentions rhcp and “californication” but the title is from good ol’ irish lad [hozier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eUFtrQvsBc). i’m over on tumblr as [twelvemagpies](https://twelvemagpies.tumblr.com/), and i’m pretty damn new to the hobbit fandom so come yell at me


End file.
